Social Class

[mao]

  How do you handle this? My default is Landed Gentry's children make up most of the PCs but I have have had demi-gods and princes. 
how do you handle this?

[Hexenritter Verlag]

In my game it depends on my players, they are often orphans, or from lowly backgrounds but I had a few from well off merchant families or the aristocracy. But social class interactions were never a major issue during those campaigns.

[mao]

Jul 13, 2018 12:44:26 GMT -5 Hexenritter Verlag said:

In my game it depends on my players, they are often orphans, or from lowly backgrounds but I had a few from well off merchant families or the aristocracy. But social class interactions were never a major issue during those campaigns.

My general reason for making the PCs UM or LU is they would have the money for training

[ripx187]

Social class is generally ignored by my players, but I find them fascinating. I usually assign it according to PC Class, Level, and how the player role-plays. I use it as a base for how civilized NPCs treat the players as well as the quality of equipment, and the monthly tax. Where the players came from and their current social class is rarely the same.

Gygax put an interesting chart in his Unearthed Arcana book which added random tables for birth, but his rules as written I find to be flawed. To his logic (and many Dungeon Master's as well) social class would place limitations on the character. For example, if a player rolled up Lower Lower Class they could only be a thief or an assassin. Why? 

Wizards, in many games, are always assumed to be of higher class stock; the logic being that they have an education and demand higher standards of living. While this no doubt applies to the common man, Player Characters aren't common. Common men are 0th level and PCs never were. Something happened to this Low-Class ragamuffin prior to us meeting him which elevated him to 1st level. There always has been special circumstances for protagonists, maybe a noble knight feels indebted to a family who once did him a great kindness, so he takes a young man as a squire? A Wizard sees potential in a street urchin and decides to take him in. Who better to become a cleric than someone who is looking to escape the violence of street life? 1st level is a big deal! This turns them from being normal to being a protagonist in our little dramas.

The lower class, to me, comes with benefits. They are highly skilled at getting by with very little and they'll possess street smarts which the other social classes will never have.

That whole UA social system is highly flawed and makes unacceptable assumptions, even if you are playing the implied setting of Greyhawk. The social system listed in that book would only seem to work if one starts the game in a large city, specifically the city of Greyhawk. The social system falls apart as soon as you move the starting point out into the countryside. Out there the idea of lower and middle class is completely different, not to mention even the high class would still be considered to be hicks once they set foot in a large city.

The American Dream always seems to play a critical role in our settings, this is our fantasy and much of the fun comes from attempting to rise above our station in life. Our characters aren't like everybody else. They aren't content with spending their lives at the dock pushing around a cart full of fish all day for a copper piece at the end of the week. Our characters are going to risk their lives delving into nightmarish pits in search of fabulous wealth, regardless of their social class! Rich or poor, that is what they are going to do.

While no doubt an unoriginal whim, I have been tinkering with the idea of designing a 9 point tax system to expedite play. Instead of purchasing everything ala carte, paying for meals and lodging, etc; players pay a monthly expense. They'll still have to purchase some things, such as upgrading their armour up to Chainmail or replacing an Axe which was left behind, but the bulk of it would be taken care of automatically by paying a set tax. If one can't afford to pay the tax for the social class that they are currently in, then their social class drops one level, or matches the level which they choose to pay for.

The design would penalize Lower Class and assume poor equipment, and reward higher class with bonuses such as better sleep and superior equipment. Like I said, not original, but I would keep the inner workings of this system a secret from the players, but predictable to me. Parts of it will have to be static, but I'll still need it to be open to interpretation during play. One also has to ask, where are they paying these living taxes? If they spend months outside of town, perhaps their situation drops a level because they are out in the wilderness roughing it. Just because the players are incredibly wealthy, if they spent six weeks living out in the woods when they get back to town they are probably going to look like wildmen; unshaved, filthy, and worn out, or, depending on role-playing, they could be pompous enough to camp like British Explorers traveling with an entourage of servants and forcing life to be as civilized as possible no matter where they may be; thus the system must remain open.

It sounds fun to me! 

[Deleted]

I tried formalizing a social system IMC in the late '70s but it never took with my players. I finally went informal with it: if a player wanted to be high class I let them pick from: gentle, knight, and of course (per the rules) baron ... just not landed like an official baron. This gave them CHA perks with the peers and wannabes, and a penalty with the lower classes and criminal elements. It worked just fine in practice and taught me a lot about the KISS (keep it simple, stupid) maxim.

[True Black Raven]

It only plays a small part now and then.

[mao]

bump

[El Borak]

I find it very interesting, but my players were never interested, so I never did anything with it.

[mormonyoyoman]

One had a choice between gentile, night, or barren? What a grim game, Gizka. (sp?)